"Will my death-hour ever come?" I asked myself despairingly. "Have I not tasted of the worst of life? Is not the poisoned cup drained to its last dregs?"
I fancied that I heard a voice answer, as from the clouds,
"No, there are a few bitterer drops that must yet be drunk. Press the goblet still closer to your lips."
I shuddered coldly as the last tones of the imagined voice died away upon the soft night air.
"Is that," I cried, "a prophet warning? Comes it to me now that I may gird my soul for the approaching warfare? Let me, then, put on my helmet and buckler, and, like a life-tired soldier, rush headlong into the thickest of the fight, praying that the first bullet may prove a friend and drink my blood!"
Yet I shrank, like the weakest and most fearful of my race, when the distant cotton-fields rose upon my mental view! There, beneath the heat of a "hot and copper sky," I saw myself wearily tugging at my assigned task; yet my fear was not for the physical trouble that awaited me. Had Henry been going, "down the river" would have had no terror for me; but I was to part from joy, from love, from life itself! Oh, why, why have we—poor bondsmen and bondswomen—these fine and delicate sensibilities? Why do we love? Why are we not all coarse and hard, mere human beasts of burden, with no higher mental or moral conception, than obedience to the will or caprice of our owners?
Night closed over this second weary day. And thus passed on many days and nights. I did some plain sewing by way of employment, and at the command of a mulatto woman, who was the kept mistress of Atkins, and therefore placed in authority over us. Many of the women were hired out to residents of the city on trial, and if they were found to be agreeable and good servants, perhaps they were purchased. Before sending them out, Mr. Atkins always called them to him, and, shaking his cane over their heads, said,
"Now, you d——d hussy, or rascal (as they chanced to be male or female) if you behave yourselves well, you'll find a good home; but you dare to get sick or misbehave, and be sent back to me, and I'll thrash you in an inch of your cursed life."
With this demoniacal threat ringing in their ears, it is not likely that the poor wretches started off with any intention of bad conduct.